


i'll save your bones

by astrogeny



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-25
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-26 22:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2669390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrogeny/pseuds/astrogeny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Plegia," Tharja says immediately, "Plegia is in your skin and your blood and your bones and all the spaces in between them."</p><p> </p><p>"A mirror could have told me that," Robin replies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll save your bones

**Author's Note:**

> i’m honestly not sure what this is—me trying to make myself understand tharja? me admitting it took me forever to realize her name is probably supposed to be pronounced “thar-ya” w/a soft j? me coming up w/an excuse for making my default robin’s birthday 1/1? here it is, tho.

"Robin," Tharja says from the corner of the office, and it hangs in the space between a statement and a question.

  
"Yes?" without looking up from her notes—Tharja is, at this point, simply an ambivalent specter wherever Robin chooses to work.

  
"When is your birthday?" Robin sucks on the tip of her quill’s feather (a bad habit she will never remember acquiring) and debates whether or not she wants to know why Tharja is asking. It would be untrue to say she hasn’t been studying up on dark magic with a greater intensity lately, but it would be equally untrue to say that Tharja has put it to any use more sinister than hexing Virion to do her chores for her. In short, Robin has found that Tharja is far less malevolent than she makes herself appear, perhaps even far less malevolent than she truly wants to be.

  
"January first," Robin says. Tharja gives a little snort of disbelief.

  
"What a neatly auspicious day," she remarks, with no small touch of sardonicism. Robin sighs and turns in her chair.

  
"Either that, or a lazy day—in truth, I have no idea when I was actually born. It seemed the easiest choice at the time, if choosing your own birthday can be called easy in the first place." What she omits is that the day she met Chrom seemed too trite, even for her, and that she can never recall if it was the twenty-third or the twenty-fourth of that month anyhow. "I’m surprised you didn’t," Robin wiggles her fingers vaguely to indicate some sort of dark magic, "find some means to divulge that information for yourself."

  
"I tried. The spell didn’t work, so I had no other course but to ask you yourself." Tharja’s eyes narrow, and in the lamplight, it only makes them shine brighter. "Whoever or whatever gave you protection against any prying eyes did a real," her mouth twists wryly, "humdinger." Robin raises a brow at the choice of terminology and says nothing. "It’s like cutting open a tree and finding that the rings only go back halfway, while the rest of the bark is completely smooth," Tharja extrapolates.

  
"I’m not so sure how I feel about being compared to a tree that you’ve chopped down," remarks Robin, forcing a lightness into her voice that she does not feel. "So you can read absolutely nothing of me?"

  
"Not ‘nothing’, per se," and Tharja edges closer, the hem of her cloak against the floor is as breathy as her voice. "Nothing of what was, nothing of what will be. Just what is, right now."

  
"And what is there?" Robin’s stillness is her consent, and Tharja’s hand comes to cup her cheek. It is neither cold nor hot, though Robin could not explain why she’d expected one extreme or the other. It trembles slightly, either from idolatry or an otherwise well-hidden flair for a bit of drama.

  
"Plegia," Tharja says immediately, "Plegia is in your skin and your blood and your bones and all the spaces in between them."

  
"A mirror could have told me that," Robin replies, dwelling for a moment just long enough to be uncomfortable on Chrom’s insistence that there is no way she could be, should be Plegian. "So is that why you’re so—well, frankly, why you’re so obsessed with me? Because I remind you of home?" Tharja scoffs.

  
"If I were a patriot, I would still be on Plegian sands, and Chrom would likely be beneath them."

  
"What is it, then?" and she feels vaguely pathetic, asking a young woman who performs a role as a dark mage before she could ever truly live it to tell her who she is. As if that is even an answer that can be given. Abruptly, Tharja’s hand leaves her face to twiddle a strand of hair in an oddly coquettish gesture.

  
"My name," she mumbles at last. "Most say it ‘Thar-juh’. You pronounced it right."

  
"You follow me about and make your entire world revolve around me because I pronounced your  _name_  correctly?” Robin repeats, incredulous. Even as she speaks, a part of her recognizes this as the kind of moment she will look back upon to realize how callous she has been.

  
"People have sworn devotion for less still," and Robin is suddenly almost glad that she never chose the twenty-third or the twenty-fourth of whatever month as the day her life began.


End file.
